


Sail Away, Sail Home Again

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Dreams and Nightmares, Friendship, Gen, Kinda, Purple Prose, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 11:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10740981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Moana always knows exactly what to say to Maui, even after the worst of nightmares.





	Sail Away, Sail Home Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperjamBipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperjamBipper/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Paper!

Maui, as a general rule, didn’t sleep. It wasn’t just because he could go without rest, that helped, but it wasn’t why. He much preferred to be out on the sea or in the sky, sailing or flying, doing something, fighting something, earning himself into some new story. He would rather be living the present, creating the future, than falling back into the past.

Maui, in the thousands of years he had been alive, had never slept, at least not that he could remember, without dreaming, and he had never dreamt without ending up in a nightmare. Past defeats, victories that could have gone wrong, pain, solitude, fear.

His most common nightmare, which shouldn’t have surprised him, were people sailing away. His mother. The gods. Humans. Moana. Different circumstances, different lifetimes, always left behind. Left in the ocean to drown. Left among the humans to search for praise. Left on a barren island to serve his punishment. Left on Motunui when Moana stopped wanting to deal with his antics, and went sailing off, thinking he wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t care. (he did)

He hadn’t watched her leave, not this time, but when he wandered down to the beach, her canoe was gone from its place on the shore, and her Chief’s headdress had replaced the oar that usually hung in her  _ fale. _

So Maui, like the mature, thousands-of-years-old demigod he was, turned his back on the empty hut, walked out of the village a little quicker and more forcefully than absolutely necessary, and slipped into the grove of palms to sulk until Moana came back.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he’d managed to settle himself into an almost ridiculously comfortable position, curled up at the base of a tree, the warmth of Motunui’s night as good as any blanket, and even as his subconscious protested, knowing what came next, he let his eyes slip closed.

 

_ In his dream, she is light. She boards her canoe with a flair that he knows she learned from him, shoving the boat into the water. Her oar is as bright as she, the hook and heart carved in stark and black against it. Her hair is made of sunbeams, her eyes are stars. He can see her heart, beating in her chest, radiance pulsing outward. He shields his eyes and holds his hand out to her, but she is already sailing away. _

_ In his dream, he is dark, and darkness clings to all he touches. The island dies beneath him as he follows after her, the ocean shudders into sludge when it laps over his feet, his hook hums with bruised purple lightning, a jagged crack bleeding gloom into the air. He is a silhouette cut out of the landscape, an error, a negative space. _

_ In his dream, she recoils. Her light flinches away from his touch, the very ocean draws back. The sand is jagged beneath his feet as she flings open her sail and the wind carries her away from him, carries her light to somewhere safer. _

_ In his dream, he hears voices. Most of them he cannot tie names or faces to, but those he can hurt like knives, like lava, like drowning. None of the words are creations, they speak nothing but truth. Some are simply weeping. _

_ In his dream, he stands in the ruins of a thousand lives and watches the light fade against the horizon and shatter into stardust, stands on the beach as the ocean and the sky curl away from him, scorched by his darkness, damaged by how much he lacks. _

 

He jerked awake with a half-swallowed cry and a panic-laced gasp, hunching over. His hands grasped at his sides, fingernails leaving pale crescents against his tattooed skin. His eyes were screwed shut, shoulders hitched up, breath a shuddering wheeze.

The practice of millennia forced him to calm after barely a minute, eyes blinking open against the rising sun. His hands uncurled, clenched into fists, and relaxed. A songbird landed on his forearm, and he whistled a greeting as he stood.

Unconsciously, his feet took him through the trees, to a hollow where the stars and the ocean were spread out like a picture, framed by trees. He settled himself to the ground, talking in whistles and chirps and half-words to the bird, killing time.

The bird flew away, and only the waves and breeze were left to keep him company. He heaved a sigh, and his warrior face cracked apart with it. He blinked forlornly at the sea, the dream still clinging to him in traces of light and shadow. He could see the canoes from here. Moana was back.

“It shouldn’t bother me this much,” he said aloud, the the birds, to the ocean, to the sky. “She’s Moana, she can do her own thing. She doesn’t complain when I fly off without saying anything.”

Something bitter and tired crept into Maui’s voice, hunched his shoulders, brought his hand to the back of his neck, curled his fingers against the dirt.

“Then again…” he hummed, to the trees, to the fading stars, to the earth. “She hasn’t spent her whole life being abandoned over and over.”

He cocked his head, listened for a moment, and sighed. Great. Just great. “Come on out, Moana.”

The girl that emerged from the trees wasn’t the being of light from his dream, but she might as well have been, dim as though that brightness was with the shame in her downturned gaze and hunched shoulders. “I…” she began, and kicked at the ground helplessly. “I had no idea, I…”

“It’s fine.” Maui sighed, running his hand through his hair.. “You’re Moana, you can sail off, do your own thing. It’s whatever, it’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, and his voice broke to prove it, because she  _ wasn’t supposed to be doing this _ ! He was the one at fault, not her. That sadness in her voice  _ hurt,  _ because it wasn’t her that should be hurting! It was  _ his _ problem,  _ his _ failure.

Her hand rested on his shoulder as she sat beside him, and she pressed herself against his side, head settling against his chest. “I won’t leave you behind.” she said, and he knew she would go on, but she didn’t need to. Everything that she had ever said, would ever say, curled into those simple words, pressed love and fondness into every syllable. The nightmare fell apart, all but the stars in her eyes dissipating into inconsequence.

Those stars stayed as she went on, not cringing away, not accusing him of darkness, but shining, bright and unfaltering, melting the shadows. “I will never, ever leave you behind, Maui. You’re my best friend. No matter for how long you don’t see me, I will always come back. I promise.”

Maui folded her in his arms so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes, held her close and didn’t say another word, just clung to her and breathed. She wasn’t like his mother, or the gods, or the humans, or Tamatoa, or anyone else. She was Moana, and she wouldn’t leave.


End file.
